Wackiest thing you've ever eaten

[Ari]

Fermented swedish herring--surstromming. (shudder)

Ari tries surstromming

[picaman]

In front of each of us,placed through the holes in the table, were live monkeys. Following the lead of our hosts, we lifted the top half of the skulls and proceeded to eat the brains of the monkeys....

Maybe you could tell us how you lifted the top half of the skulls off the live monkeys.

What I found out later was that they get the monkeys drunk and when they pass out the chef slices through the skull basically using a bone saw. You then just lift the top off and there you go... To be honest it's not something I'm in a hurry to do or try again!!!

I've always thought that this was an urban legend stemming from a faked scene for the movie "Faces of Death." Maybe not--nothing about it on snopes.com. I learn something every day!

My wackiest menu items: possum (or for the spelling nags, opossum), squirrel, rattlesnake, chitlins.

Can you tell where I grew up?

Jamie

[pepperAnn]

Have we really lost our minds?? I guess I am quite a wimp when it comes to trying anything "different".

Perhaps the most bizarre thing I ever ate was boiled peanuts, which my college roommate brought from Florida. Beyond that, I'm not too adventurous. I tried deer meat, but couldn't get past the fact that it was indeed deer meat.

I read a magazine article written by Mary Tyler Moore entitled "I Never Eat Anything With A Face". After reading some of these posts, it's not a bad idea. Hats off to those of you who are sooooo brave!!

[Liz Johnson]

Funny. I've had live ants, too, and I thought they tasted like lime. Maybe they are citrusy, then.

I've also had duck testicles wrapped in bacon. They tasted, naturally, like bacon.

[QuinaQuen]

Have we really lost our minds?? I guess I am quite a wimp when it comes to trying anything "different".

Perhaps the most bizarre thing I ever ate was boiled peanuts, which my college roommate brought from Florida. Beyond that, I'm not too adventurous. I tried deer meat, but couldn't get past the fact that it was indeed deer meat.

I read a magazine article written by Mary Tyler Moore entitled "I Never Eat Anything With A Face". After reading some of these posts, it's not a bad idea. Hats off to those of you who are sooooo brave!!

Boiled peanuts? I can thank my dog@#$%gone South Carolina-bred grandpappy for getting me hooked on those. Trashy, yes, but wacky?

[phaelon56]

I'm with ya on the boiled peanuts. I'm a born and bred Yankee but when I was turned on to boiled peanuts it became and still remains a unique food in my experience. I can't say that I love them or crave them yet oince a can is open I can't stop eating them until they're all gone.

[Katherine]

When we used to drive down to FL every year, we'd buy those boiled peanuts and munch constantly. My favorite was a stand that had a sign "bouillt pnuts".

[Mayhaw Man]

The guy that runs the vegetable stand in my little town has always got a big pot of really spicy boiled peanuts (basically they are boiled in Zatarain's crab boil with about 10 heads of garlic) going. He throws them in as lagniappe if you buy enough tomatoes and satsumas. I love those things.

[indybear]

The best I can do are the relatively mundane (for eGullet) fried scorpion and duck feet, separately, in China. The best thing about either was the mustard served with the duck feet.

[marlena spieler]

i can't cope with bugs, brains and bugs and hate myself for this vestige of squeamishness.

chicken feet, calves foot, cockscombs all seem very pedestrian to me.

not wacky, perhaps, but fairly unusual was the bowl of sheep-eye (well sheeps head, i was given the eye as a sign of friendship i think) soup with egg-lemon was a bit of a shocker when it was placed in front of me. But very delicious! rich, smooth, subtle........still, the texture did put me off, and next time i'll eat it without the eye.

[chengb02]

all this civet cat and no SARS, those that have tried it can count themselves as lucky (I guess) considering it is now nearly impossible to get within China. I don't know if I have much to compete with everybody else, Chinese just naturally eat a lot of weird things. But I guess what would top my list, and still be pretty low, would be snake (and also add snake blood to the list). The snake was okay, but the best part presentation wise (not for the faint of heart) is the killing of the snake at the table and then pouring its blood into a glass of bai jiu, I think the point is for the alcohol to dull the senses and help you to ignore what you saw...

[DeannaS]

Well, it doesn't compare with what all of you have eaten, but I've eaten Road Kill Jerky in Nigeria. It's called suya. Don't believe the sites that say it's usually beef. You don't generally see many cows hanging out in Southwestern Nigeria. But, you do see lots of folks selling large rodents that have been hit by cars. I never did learn what the rodents were called. But, damn, they were big - about the size of a large dog.

The suya just tasted like spicy jerky. So, taste-wise, it wasn't very wacky.

[Suzanne F]

My first time at Costco today. All that walking up and down the aisles made me hungry, so I stopped at the snackbar before leaving. Had a "Chicken Bake" -- something like a baked calzone or stromboli: outer layer of dough, topped with shredded ?cheese?; filling was shredded chicken breast, bacon, onion, ranch dressing, cheese of some sort. Surprisingly, the chicken actually tasted like chicken, and the bacon was, well, bacon. Otherwise, nothing supplied any flavor to the thing.

Pretty strange to me, anyway.

[hjshorter]

Fermented swedish herring--surstromming. (shudder)

Ari tries surstromming

That made my skin crawl just listening to it. It sounds unbelievably vile.

[AzRaeL]

Well, it doesn't compare with what all of you have eaten, but I've eaten Road Kill Jerky in Nigeria. It's called suya. Don't believe the sites that say it's usually beef. You don't generally see many cows hanging out in Southwestern Nigeria. But, you do see lots of folks selling large rodents that have been hit by cars. I never did learn what the rodents were called. But, damn, they were big - about the size of a large dog.

The suya just tasted like spicy jerky. So, taste-wise, it wasn't very wacky.

it might be an Agouti

http://www.honoluluzoo.org/agouti.htm

[dankphishin]

Nothing that weird for this bunch, but...........

Sea Cucumber (in Hong Kong, absolutely disgusting)

Horse Sashimi

Scrapple (actually, i eat this a lot)

[bergerka]

Dude...my mom says the same thing about sea cucumber. In fact, it's really amusing to just say "sea cucumber" when she's in the room...she turns the coolest shade of light green.

K

[AzRaeL]

Dude...my mom says the same thing about sea cucumber. In fact, it's really amusing to just say "sea cucumber" when she's in the room...she turns the coolest shade of light green.

K

Seacucumber is YUMMY. Braised in Oyster Sauce and served with Shitake, and maybe some abalone.

[dankphishin]

oh, the sauce was great. it was just the texture that put me off. another not really weird, but kind of weird thing i had, also in hong kong, was shark fin soup with crab roe........unfuckinbelievable. wow.

[AzRaeL]

oh, the sauce was great. it was just the texture that put me off. another not really weird, but kind of weird thing i had, also in hong kong, was shark fin soup with crab roe........unfuckinbelievable. wow.

that's not weird. Sharkfin soup with crab roe sounds DELICIOUS.

yesterday, for a food review i had to eat Geoduck sashimi. It was FRESH. I saw them remove it from the tank and shortly after that, paper thin slices of the giant clam arrayed on the plate. Also had the option to dip it in simmering chicken stock. DELICIOUS.

Had fresh Alaskan King Crab too. One minute they were sitting around in a big tank, next minute...it's steamed and dissected on my plate. FRESH!

The place is called "Unique Seafood Market." it's really QUITE an experience.

You see a whole display of live seafood. Some really exotic creatures too. You select your critter, and they'll prepare it the way you like it. So fresh that Charlie Trotter would die of envy.

There was even the massive Australian King Crab which easily weighs in more than 10lbs.

I saw a live TigerSharks too just waiting to appear on your table.

Some of the stuff was surrealistically expensive. The Alaskan King Crab came up to about USD $100 per crab. The Turbot, airflown from France (live in the tanks) were about USD 30 /lb.

http://www.uniqueseafood.com/corporate.html

[Pan]

Is any crab good enough to be worth $100?

[AzRaeL]

Is any crab good enough to be worth $100?

the Australian KING crabs were about $200 :)

http://www.hedge.net/fields/giantcrab.html

[beercancan]

At a Rutgers fair they were giving out stickers that said "I Ate Bugs" at Rutgers, and all these people had them on their shirts. So I wanted one, but you had to eat bugs to get one. I ate some fried worms and some bugs, but there weren't enough for a good meal, just to give out the stickers. Good though.

I guess besides bugs that pig embryos and genitals (bull penis, turkey testicles) are "wacky". Try Kenka on St Marks in NYC for some cool stuff.

Edited September 1, 2004 by beercancan (log)

[Daniel]

Is any crab good enough to be worth $100?

the Australian KING crabs were about $200 :)

http://www.hedge.net/fields/giantcrab.html

Damn. How many people did that thing feed. Anything where you would look as natural on your foods plate as the food looks on your plate is a pretty intense thing.

[EdS]

Llama and alpaca steaks in Peru. I recall the alpaca being more tender than the llama (I think) and that both tasted a lot like lamb.